Vibratory feeders and related devices are well known in the prior art. These devices are used to feed various components or articles of manufacture, in sequence, to a conventional machine tool or other apparatus within which certain work operations are performed on the articles. For example, these devices may employ a vibrating hopper having a spiral trackway formed on its inner cylindrical or conical surface for progressively feeding the respective articles of manufacture in sequence out of the hopper.
While generally satisfactory for the purposes intended, these prior art vibratory feeding devices are usually relatively large and bulky and hence require a relatively large floor space. Additionally, these devices are somewhat inflexible, that is, they are not readily adaptable to a relatively large number of components and articles having a wide variety of respective sizes, shapes and weights.
In an effort to alleviate the floor space requirements of the vibratory hoppers, various types of vertical stackers have been developed in the prior art. These stackers may employ a substantially vertically-oriented magazine. This magazine may cooperate with a suitable indexing mechanism for selectively removing the articles, in sequence, out of the magazine. While substantially reducing the floor space requirements, these vertical stackers are generally used for relatively-simple identical parts, as for example, a motor armature shaft having a substantially uniform diameter. Shafts having one or more collars or annular shoulders formed thereon are not readily adaptable to these vertical stackers. Accordingly, these vertical stackers are not universally applicable to a wide variety of components or articles of manufacture having varying diameters or irregular configurations.
The use of vibratory strips of relatively stiff bristles has also been used in prior art conveyorized systems. These bristles are oriented away from the vertical and in the direction of desired travel of the articles longitudinally down an elongated conveyor. An improvement to this art is described and claimed in the co-pending Haaser application, Ser. No. 626,774 filed July 2, 1984, and assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
Additionally, the prior art has resorted to a variety of conveyorized feeding trays, wherein the articles of manufacture are positioned in a substantially fixed relationship on the tray. The tray may cooperate with an X-Y type of robotic arm that periodically indexes over the tray to select one of the components and transfer it to a machine tool or other apparatus. Since the positions of the articles on the tray are all different, the robotic arm must sense the respective coodinates of the next desired article to be picked up and transferred. An electronically-controlled sensing means is required, which is fairly complex and sophisticated, relatively expensive, and subject to reliability problems requiring shut-down and repair.